Keely and Du

A friend of mine who’d originally agreed to join me for Keely and Du backed out when he read a synopsis of the plot, which he regarded incredulously. The story of a militant pro-file group that kidnaps an abortion-seeking girl and forces her to carry her pregnancy to term in captivity sounded so forced to him it resembled satire. And it’s true, Jane Martin’s 1993 Pulitzer finalist is a literal embodiment of the “issue play,” trapping two characters with diametrically opposing views in a room and squaring them off.

It’s a glum affair, as the subject matter is as humorless as is achievable and the play regularly congratulates itself for shedding such compassionate, open-minded perspective on the impoverished urchin whose brutish husband raped her and the kindly Christian grandmother who takes care of said girl while she’s chained to a bed. But at least Infamous Commonwealth’s production features a step forward for the company in terms of professional presentation.

As directed by Kurt Naebig, Thompson and Maclay find a natural rhythm within Martin’s chop suey of underwritten short scenes, and Maclay in particular manages to create an elderly Christian without fetishisizing her. And as the incompetent, secretly angry pastor who boondoggles the operation, Joseph makes a strong supporting turn. And while Heath Hays’s basement set is drab, it’s intentionally so, and the cleanest in execution of anything we’ve seen Infamous Commonwealth do. But at the end of the day, Keely and Du isn’t just less than sum of its parts; it’s less than the summary of its plot.